How "good" were old films and paper?

athanasius80 said:

A post the other day commented on the possibility of b&w photo supplies in the future potentially being homemade products comparable to commercial products of the 1920s-1940s.

I don't want to debate that, but out of curiousity, how good were commercial films and papers of the 1920s-1940s era? For instance, was Kodak Non-Curling film anything like modern ortho? What about something like PMC Bromide Paper? Hope I don't start a flame war, just thinking and thought I'd post to the group. Thanks!

Click to expand...

http://www.zi.fotothek.org/ is an archive of (mostly colour) photography taken during the second half of WWII (43-45 I think) in order to preserve a memory that might overwise be lost (The Dresden Cathedral is an example of a building restored thaks to such photographs). More than 40 years passed between the taking and digitalisation of the material, leading to some of the colour fading and shifts. Some of the Drseden images are directly accessible from this link - http://www.zi.fotothek.org/obj/obj19002466/Galerie

Doesn't appear to be all that bad or have had all that low resolution judging form the downscaled images...

avandesande said:

The original post was asking if the old films were 'better'. Okay, well if you care about grain they weren't. The poster asked a technical question and I gave a easily quantifiable answer. Maybe you should get some coffee?

Click to expand...

The original post was certainly not asking if the old materials were better - simply how good they were. The original post even had a specific reason for asking the question stated.

avandesande said:

You can see grain in EW contact prints. Do what you want with that.

Click to expand...

Bearing in mind, of course, that some of his contact prints were made from enlarged 3x4" negs (portraits mostly, shot with the Graflex), and that he was developing his negs in ABC pyro, which produces particularly grainy results.